This Beat Goes On
by cjjs
Summary: Ten years later, a survivor struggles to live a normal life, but does anyone really escape Raccoon City? Threeshot sequel to End Of The Line.
1. Prologue

**Featured article from Times Magazine's October 2008 issue 'Remembering Raccoon'**

ESCAPING THE NIGHTMARE.

Ten years after the Raccoon City disaster, a silent plague is claiming survivors' lives.

Barbara Metzger

A PEACEFUL BREEZE BLOWS though the Hamilton family's three-season room. Across from us, Doctor George Hamilton turns to the screen-window and smiles. Outside, his two sons, Matthew and Dylan, throw a Frisbee back and forth while the family's six month-old Labrador gives chase. Cindy Hamilton, George's wife of nine years, enters the room and perches on his recliner's arm. She runs a hand though his hair and follows his gaze outside.

The scene in the Hamilton family's rural Pennsylvania home could be described as idyllic: an affirmation that the American Dream of comfortable wealth, of safety and happiness, is still obtainable. However if one were to scrutinize, they would notice that Cindy Hamilton wears long sleeves to cover the scarring on both arms, or that George has aged prematurely and is missing enough fingers to keep him out of the operating room. The disparity doesn't stop with the residents, for though much of the Hamilton home is colourful and child-friendly; the family office door is closed, forbidding. And rightly so; the room remains off-limits to the energetic boys.

"They're good kids." George Hamilton opens the door and leads us in. "They understand and respect the work that goes on in here."

Inside is an overcrowded archives. Three bookshelves, filled with three-ring binders and banker's boxes, take up the far wall. A partially-buried computer sits in one corner. A telephone with a neck-rest sits nearby. The room's most interesting feature is opposite wall, where a pair of oversized bulletin-boards stands in place of the usual boastful display of plaques and certificates. Tacked to the boards are over a dozen sheets of printed paper: long lists of names, addresses and phone numbers. Some of the contact information has been hand-edited, an address change here, a new area-code there, but the dismayingly curious detail is that many of the names have been stricken through. And while most have been printed with the strikethrough, several have been added in red ballpoint.

George notices our scrutiny and shrugs. "I need to reprint my list. This one is six months old, and it's getting pretty messy looking."

He explains that the bulletin board contains the most accurate list of the Raccoon City disaster's civilian survivors. In total, one-thousand one-hundred and twelve people make up the list. For accuracy's sake George's name, along with his wife's, is printed near the bottom of the second page. George, a cardiac surgeon at Raccoon City Hospital prior to the outbreak, along with Cindy and three others had escaped Racoon City in the early hours of October first, fortunate enough to avoid infection and catch one of the last helicopters to leave the doomed city before the United States Military began its now-infamous final containment contingency.

By the end of the week, one-hundred thousand nine-hundred and eighty-two people had died in Raccoon City. Less than one percent of the civilian population survived the viral outbreak.

It is for this reason that the Hamilton Family's home office is significant. Inauspicious as it may seem, the room is headquarters to the Raccoon City Survivor's Support Foundation. George and Cindy Hamilton, along with a handful of other survivors, make up the grassroots organization. They operate on a grant from FEMA, as well as through private donations, and are dedicated to providing guidance and support to their fellow survivors. "We work in shifts." George explains. "There's always someone who will pick up the phone if a survivor runs into trouble. We offer basic counselling, links to further counselling if needed. We help with disability payments. We've got a couple lawyers that help us with advocacy cases."

Another of the Foundation's tasks is organizing yearly survivor reunions. George explains that often times this is the foundation's most important work. "The Raccoon City Disaster was unlike anything humanity had experienced to that point. A lot of what we've been hearing from other survivors is that most conventional counsellors just aren't capable of appreciating the trauma, coupled with the sense of betrayal, and hopelessness."

Cindy steps forward and points to a framed photo of the Racoon City Memorial, built in nearby Latham from iron and stone recovered from the wreckage of the city. "I lost my mother, two sisters. So many of us who escaped had nothing left."

"In this case there really is a fraternal bond between the survivors."George stops to link hands with his wife. "There's no cliché in the term strength in numbers. It's the isolation that's really killing us."

George goes on to explain that any name stricken off his list signifies that the survivor has died. If the name has an asterisk in the left margin, it indicates that the survivor had taken their own life. Of the three-hundred thirty-nine crossed out names, ninety-three have asterisks. Compared with a national suicide rate of (one in one-hundred) the disproportionately high number speaks for itself.

Cindy points out a name from the list. "We escaped with her. Young girl, very bright, worked for Umbrella. We tried to keep in touch with her after, but she drifted away. Two years ago she swallowed a bottle of prescription antidepressants. She didn't leave a note." She points out another name: a Raccoon City police officer who had been hit by a taxi as he left a bar after a night of binge-drinking. The coroner's report listed the cause as death my misadventure, but as far as the Hamiltons are concerned, the officer's death can also be traced to Racoon City.

Although no official study has ever been conducted to uncover and eventually stem the spate of unnecessary death, the numbers speak for themselves. A Raccoon City Disaster survivor is at ten times the risk of premature death than the average population.

George goes on. "As of right now right now. The CDC starts ringing alarm bells as soon as a flu variation with a mortality rate of one percent shows up. The Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 had a mortality rate of just over two percent. In 2005, the president lobbied congress for another six billion dollars for a national strategy to safeguard against influenza. A Raccoon City survivor has an annual mortality rate of about three percent, and the government does little to nothing to stop it. It's an epidemic. I don't use that term lightly, and the oath I took as a doctor insists that I treat the disease."

What is unfortunate for Raccoon City's dwindling pool of survivors is that George Hamilton seems to be only doctor on the case.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Hey Kids! Creepy Uncle CJJS is back, and he brought you a present. <strong>

**Please be kind. this was written in about two hours, and I think it might show.**


	2. Nautical Disaster

_One afternoon, four-thousand men died in the water here._

_And five-hundred more were thrashing madly, as parasites might in your blood._

_Now I was in a lifeboat designed for ten, and ten only._

_Anything that systematic will get you hated._

_It's not a deal, nor a test, nor a love of something fated._

_Death._

* * *

><p><strong>October 3 2008, Seattle<strong>

It was always the same.

He was driving his first car —an avocado-green Cyclone with primed fenders and a shredded vinyl roof— down an impossibly windy two-lane mountain pass. All four windows were lowered, and Susan sat laughing in the passenger seat, her black hair flying every which way. Jesse loosened his grip and goosed the throttle. The Cyclone dropped to third and cut the back skins loose. The force drove them into the dusty upholstery. Susan's delightfully terrified shriek was lost to the squeal of rubber on asphalt.

The Cyclone's built-up 302 howled. The guardrail's yellow reflectors ticked-by. The wind blasted their faces. Susan licked her lips and bent toward him. He could feel her breath; could smell her musk of cigarettes and Hubba Bubba. She whispered something indecipherable and giggled. He pricked an ear, eased the gas, and turned to her.

And in an instant he was thrown from the car, ass skidding on pavement, bootheels catching, clumsy somersaults. There was his Cyclone's back bumper, the gassy smell of carbureted exhaust, the rushing wind.

Over he went, flipping boneless down the centerline. Horizon, trees, asphalt and tail-lights. At last he came to a rest, clothing gusseted and skin bleeding, facing the direction had been headed. His girl and his car were disappearing around a hairpin curve.

A flash of sunlit chrome.

A tap of the brake-lights.

And gone.

Jesse shouted over the wind and scrambled to give chase. His legs wouldn't move, couldn't move. He glanced to his lap and struggled in his shredded bluejeans, but they seemed to have affixed themselves to the roadway.

The wind blasted. His jacket parachuted. He wrenched at his pantlegs. The blacktop was alive and slurping at his torso. In no time his legs were half buried. He shouted, alone, deafened by the jet-engine vortex around him.

Deeper, and deeper, legs swallowed. The quicksand blacktop lapped at his right hand, claimed the fingers and held tight. Jesse screamed like rabbit in a snare, jerked himself sideways, and ended up facing the opposite direction. In the distance, Raccoon City's unmistakable skyline twinkled and burned like some faraway act of divine retribution.

Deeper, deeper, up to his chest. The windblast stole away his cries for help. His free arm clawed at the tacky pavement and disappeared. Up to his chin, he took in a breath tinged with exhaust and gunsmoke, of ammonia and sewage.

And then he was underwater.

The asphalt roiled above him. Pressure from all sides crushed his chest flat. He was twisting in a slow roll while the hurricane continued to hammer his eardrums. Unable to resist, he exhaled. His final breath bubbled past his eyes. He flailed upward, managed a single clumsy breaststroke when strong hands grabbed his ankles and tugged. He sucked a half-lungful of brackish water, retched, and kicked at the restraint.

He couldn't breathe.

Another yank downward, his shirttails drifted. More hands found him and pulled. The sharp fingers clawed into the meat of his calf.

The wind bubbled and throbbed against his ears. He couldn't breathe.

Down, down, down.

He cracked his eyes. The water burned his retnas. The pressure pushed them deep against their sockets.

Jesse peered at his restraints. He attempted a gasp. Susan's sister —ten years dead from a bullet to the brain— had one arm snaked up to his crotch. Dead Stacey Kelso, one eye floating on its stalk, sawdust hair drifting like sea-anemone. He screamed his lungs full.

He couldn't breathe. Stacey smiled. Her bottom lip split. An Exxon slick of dark blood curled upward. She grabbed his belt and pulled.

His vision dimmed, but not before seeing a riverbed of corpses: Jim Hildebrand, Marty Danielson, Jenn Vincent, his mother. One hundred-thousand white faces. Two-hundred thousand crowblack eyes, hungry and waiting.

For him.

Stacey smiled and pulled.

The river beat against him.

He couldn't breathe.

Wet and heat and weight. Stuffy blackness.

He couldn't breathe.

He flapped his arms, fought against the straightjacket restraints. His arm struck something heavy and bunted it away. The wind buzzed. He flipped sideways. Cold air washed against him.

He couldn't breathe.

Eyes open, blackness and red points of light. He slipped against wet fabric. The Arklay River flooded his mouth and nostrils. His chest was molten slag.

But with frenzied strain, the tiniest of breaths kissed his lungs. It sounded like an imploding television tube. He jerked an arm. Something small but recognizable —a talisman, of sorts— spun to the floor.

The wind buzzed.

He couldn't breathe.

The sweatlogged sheets were flung aside. He rolled sideways, groped along the hardwood for his castaway charm. The blackness was like the void of outer space, his skin all at once feverish and freezing. His hand fell across the overturned lamp, a newspaper.

He couldn't breathe.

Success! His fingers closed around the inhaler, and he plunged it halfway into his eager mouth. One pump, two more. Cold metallic mist replaced the foul tang of riverwater. Two more pumps, breath came easier. One more for good measure, and he collapsed gasping into his nest of terror-sweat and tangled sheets.

And the bedroom was quiet once more, save his ragged breathing and the ring of his pulse.

The Arklay River, Raccoon City and Stacey Kelso were remanded to their uneasy confinement in his subconscious.

He shivered under the fan's steady blast and felt for the bedsheets. They were soggy and slick: repulsive. Wanting away, he propped himself up, his gimp arm screaming in outrage. The bed shook; Susan muttered and rolled deeper into her goosedown cocoon. Her head poked out from the curl of blankets. Her chest rose and fell in untroubled sleep. This made him furious. He was drowning in his own lungs and beating himself to death less than a foot away, and she slept through it, just rolled over and pulled the sheets over her head. Thanks for the help, Suzy-Q.

So he sat a good minute, shivering, and stewing with his bad arm cradled in his good. He swallowed and cleared his chest from its nightly accumulation of bloody phlegm. Only one lung worked properly. The other, the one that idiot National Guardsman put a bullet through, scarred uselessness. The docs said he'd live a long life, even if he wouldn't be winning any hundred-yard dashes, but they must have forgotten to prep him about the pain, about the lifetime's worth of pills and inhalers he's be chained to.

It beat the alternative, didn't it?

Meanwhile, Susan snored gently. He tugged the sheets away from her face and bent forward. She smiled in her sleep. She always did.

And he loved her for it.

Jesse wiped his forehead and cracked the kink out of his neck. It wasn't her fault that he couldn't sleep. She tried her best. Besides, she had her job, her kids, her life. Jesse was a big boy. He had made it this far. But he wasn't going to be getting any more sleep in the wet and smelly coffin on his side of the bed, and so he swung his legs out, grabbed the all-important inhaler and fished his jeans from the floor, leaving his serene wife to whatever dreams a thirty-three year old English teacher dreamt.

Jesse took slow and careful steps past TJ and Dana's rooms. He kept an ear cocked to their doors but heard nothing but his bedroom fan's muted buzz. It wasn't much surprise. Both kids took after their mother.

His toes curled against the cold tile. He clicked the bathroom door closed before turning on the lights, winced against the hundred-watt sunrise. Head on wall, he flipped open the medicine cabinet and swallowed a pair of extra-strength Aspirins with a palmfull of tapwater. He left the tap on, swung the cabinet door shut, and mopped at his face with a dampened rag. The cloth caught in his stubble and left tufts of turquoise along his jawline. He frowned, bent over the counter to pluck them out. He was close enough to see the purplish discolouration under both eyes, the unhealthy yellow in his corneas. Offended by the sight, but morbidly curious, he turned sideways and traced the grotesque roadway of puckered scar that crisscrossed his upper torso. He ran his hand along his protruding ribcage, to his bicep and pressed a thumb into the crater where Chief Irons had shot him, where the Army surgeons cut away a half-pound of infected flesh. He worked over his arthritic shoulder, down his flank, past the divot where Guardsman Jonathan Njeld's first bullet struck, and settled his palm over the softball-sized web of discolouration above his hip, where Njeld's second bullet punctured his liver. The bullet was still in there somewhere. The docs said it was lodged against his spine, too risky to remove.

"Scarred old slaver know he's doin' all right…" Jesse chuckled, coughed, and spat a bloody ribbon into the sink.

Goddamn Seattle. The humidity was bad enough, but as soon as the weather turned cold, it was absolute torture. They needed to move somewhere hot and dry: Arizona or New Mexico, maybe.

Who was he kidding? Susan loved Seattle, loved her school, and he didn't have the heart to take the city away from her.

The fucking martyr that he was, still alive and whining about aches and pains.

Disgusted, he clicked the lights off and retraced his mouse-steps down the hallway, feeling with his toes for any Hot Wheels, or Lego landmines. Past TJ and Dana's rooms, not a sound. Past his room, Susan was still snoring. All's quiet on the Western Front.

His quiet and careful path led him into the living room, where the couch, cool and comfortable, would make a perfect second bed. He allowed his eyes time to adjust to the darkness, gathered Dana's scattering of dolls into his arms and dumped them onto the loveseat. He kicked another of TJ's Hot Wheels out of the way and settled into the cushions. Something cold and slippery pressed against the small of his back. He fished the magazine out from under his ass and offered it a cursory glance before throwing it aside.

But the magazine wouldn't leave his hands. There was plenty of light from the streetside window. He could make-out the cover just fine: A barricaded turnpike. A rusting and dented 'Welcome to Raccoon City' billboard with a biohazard symbol spray painted over it. The Twenty-two point bold typeset was an easy read. REMEMBERING RACCOON.

A bead of sweat formed in his hairline.

Of all the things to pick up, it had to be a ten-year anniversary feature on Raccoon City. It baffled him why Susan would want to read about it in the first place. They lived that nightmare once. He escaped it. There was no reason why they needed to keep reliving it every damn year. It must be Susan's Catholic conscience that spurred her to collect every bit of half-assed Raccoon City memorabilia she could find. He asked Bachman about it once. Bachman said that she could be having survivor's guilt as well, even If she hadn't needed to escape like he had.

Survivor's guilt: such bullshit. Why should he feel guilty? He got lucky; others didn't. It was that simple.

Still, he was unable to let go of the magazine. He squinted and paged through, paused on a file photo of Chief Irons.

His breath whistled; his chest tightened. To think Brian Irons went down in history as a modern day Davey Crockett. Brian Fucking Irons: selfless hero who led the valiant but doomed defence of Raccoon City from the frontlines. Tom Selleck played him in that TV movie. His name was top of the list on the RPD's memorial in Latham. There was talk of building a statue of him.

Jesse dropped the magazine and massaged the hole Irons had put through him. Brian Irons: the blood-soaked madman in expensive clothing. Red-faced, his small teeth bared, the muzzle of his pistol flashing yellow again and again.

Sweat rolled down his nose. His lungs burned. He remembered his panic that day, scrambling out of the hallway, away from Marv and Stacey.

He remembered Stacey twitching and pissing herself, a red puddle growing around her head.

It was too much. He forced the memory aside, turned away from the tainted magazine and pressed his warm palms over both eyes. Just let the thought run its course. That's always what Bachman said. Find somewhere quiet, and let it out.

Let it out.

Let it out.

Let Stacey, and Marty and Suit Woman out. They want to play. Come on out.

"This is stupid." He dropped his hands and shook his head.

And his breath caught halfway before hissing back in. His legs kicked. Both arms flared out and cleared the side-table of its clutter. Every tendon and muscle was straining and rigid.

There was a white figure wavering near the hallway, head down and arms limp at the shoulders. A bib of black blood spread to the beltline.

"_Holyfuck!" _he gasped.

Starfished and unmoving as Dead Stacey Kelso, Jesse gawked, whistling his breath. His heart hammered against the roof of his mouth, and his eyes were wide enough to strain the lids. He didn't take his attention from the entranceway until his vision corrected, and he realised that he was freaking-out over a sweater on a coat-rack.

"Shit."

Stupid, so stupid. This was what he got for even looking at that damn magazine. Bachman was full of shit. Raccoon City belonged in the past. Let it out? Look what happened when it got let out.

At last, convinced that Susan's AFI hoodie wasn't going to come across the room after him, Jesse tucked his legs and glanced over to what he had hit: a pile of Susan's correcting and an empty coffee cup. He didn't move for a good minute, listening or any noise from the kids.

Nothing, he was lucky.

He had to get out of here. He was restless and twitchy, and he was bound to wake the kids.

A drive would help. He could go to the shop, work at some of that billing he had been putting off. All he needed was to keep himself occupied, 'get out of the bad place', as Bachman would say.

Jesse rose, slipped into his jacket and boots and penned a quick note.

_Couldn't sleep._

_At the shop_

_I'll bring back breakfast_

_J_

The front door whispered shut. Jesse took a three-quarter breath of Seattle mist, coughed, and clicked the unlock button on his Marauder. The car's marker-lights flashed a hello. He smiled, ran a hand along its dangerous curves and climbed aboard. A turn of the ignition and the engine's pulse thumped through the firewall, six-hundred and ten horses waiting for the whip to crack. He backed onto the black-marble street and managed to wait five blocks before punching the throttle, grinning as the neighbourhood's bedroom lights flicked awake.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I have a man-crush on Tom Selleck.<strong>


	3. This Beat Goes On

The Marauder sliced through I-90's drear like a black torpedo. Streetlights strobed, and the wipers whisked across his line of sight every six seconds. Faster and faster, the supercharger pumping eighteen pounds boost, making the big car whistle like an F-16 on takeoff.

Jesse smirked. His Marauder was the ultimate sleeper. Depending on who he asked, the thing either looked like Grandpa's putt-putt or an unmarked police-car. It was only when someone got up close, saw the exhaust's doublebarrelled muzzles, the performance tires and the sideglass' racing decals to know that the thing had muscle.

And muscle it had. One o-two, one o-five, and still plenty of leg. He tacked right and veered in front of a Peterbilt with super-bee fuel trailers, revelling in the rig's outraged bleating of Jake-Brakes and air-horns.

Swish, windshield clear. One hundred-twelve: plenty more to go, but the Marauder was already wandering. Susan's Saint Christopher's medallion pendulummed from the rearview mirror. Jesse wished he could stiffen the suspension so it would track tighter, but his arm couldn't handle any more vibration through the steering wheel. So Old Man Franks needed to make the occasional sacrifice to keep doing what he loved.

One hundred twenty-two. Oncoming headlights cometed by in wild phosphorous streaks. Taillights supernovaed to ten times their size and burst into white flashes as he rocketed past. He eased off the gas, kept the thing at one-hundred twenty. The boost levelled at ten psi. The exhaust's throaty roar droned down the two-inch ceramic headers and reverberated through the DynaMax mufflers. There was no need to blare his music, like Susan would whenever she had the car alone. The Marauder was his orchestra: tires on rubber, supercharger, exhaust, and wind-noise. All in symphony. Granted, Jesse would never be so arrogant as to call himself the conductor. He set the tempo and nothing else. And on those sleepless Washington mornings, the tempo was fast as the gods would allow.

Jesse took his eyes away the blurry Interstate and glanced at dancing Saint Christopher. Susan had hung him there shortly after Jesse upgraded the supercharger and started running hi-test. She warned that she was going to fill the trunk with them, told him he needed a squadron of saints to keep the thing on the road.

As if to prove that he could handle the Marauder just fine, Jesse worked another ten and weaved between a taxi and a riced-out Honda with a fart-can muffler. The ricer driver was all pomaded hair, wide eyes and shiny molars, and a moment later he was ten lengths back.

One thirty: a nice speed to escape soggy and sleepwalking Seattle. The Marauder danced between the dashes and concrete embankment. This fine separation between control and disaster was his Nirvana, and although his arm was alternately numb and throbbing, it was just strong enough to hold it straight. And so he grinned to his reflection and squeezed another two miles per-hour. Ten years ago, Susan would have been next to him, squealing in delighted terror, one hand covering her eyes, the other inching up his pantleg. That was in the past now, finished the day she got pregnant with Dana. Afterward it was all tight lips, stern words and nights in the guest bed.

Something no bigger than a spark-plug electrode managed what twenty-two years of her mother's increasingly frustrated efforts didn't: Susan Kelso had shed her rebellious skin. Her mother must have laughed in her unmarked Raccoon City grave that Sunday afternoon Susan set her arms akimbo and scolded Jesse for leaving blackies in the driveway.

Suzy-Q: mother and harried guardian, her hair grew a new stripe of white every week.

"She has every right to worry about you," spoken with cold detachment from the back seat. "You're all she has."

Jesse eased the Marauder to one-fifteen and tilted the rearview. Stacey Kelso reclined with one arm draped over TJ's car-seat. The streetlights flashed over her grey face. Arklay water seeped onto the leather upholstery.

"I was wondering when you'd show up." Easier on the throttle, boost at eight psi.

"I'm always here, you know that." She bent forward and tapped his temple. "Right in there."

He closed his eyes. It was reckless as Hell at this speed, but he was unafraid. Raccoon City hadn't killed him. Guardsman Njeld hadn't killed him. He certainly wasn't going to go down in a tangled ball of steel on the I-90.

"You're not real." Just like Bachman told him to do. "You're dead."

Jesse opened his eyes and checked the back seat: nothing but TJ's car seat and a few stray Cheez-its.

Motion to his right. Rot and watermelon shampoo under his nose. She was in Susan's spot, smiling that wicked Kelso grin. She would never be gone altogether.

"So, when are you going to tell Susie that you're going on early-morning dates with her little sister?" She opened her legs —ivory inner-thighs marbled with black veins— and tilted her pelvis toward him. "What's wrong, Big Brother?_ Did you want to fuck me?"_

Jesse strangled the steering wheel. The Marauder jerked right and grazed the embankment. The passenger's sideview was pulped into plastic and glass confetti. He tromped the gas, leapt over to the passing-lane and blew out a breath before turning to her.

"You _know_ it's not that, it's never been…_that_. I just-"

"Then what about this?" She grabbed her chest. Mildewed cleavage heaved against her mouldering Oregon State University tank-top. "And what about _these_?" She pointed to her immodestly short cutoffs: something Sensible Stacey would have never worn during her twenty years among the living.

Jesse could only shrug. Bachman asked about Stacey quite a bit. Bachman would never be so helpful as to speak in absolutes, but he guessed that Stacey's heightened femininity might have been some external manifestation of her premature death. It was the only thing that made sense.

"I think it was your story in the clock-tower." He was accelerating again. Escape Seattle. Escape Susan and the kids. Escape himself. "You got to me. Got me thinking about how you'd never have kids…never get married."

She narrowed her eyes in mock accusation. One was clear and green, the other bloodshot, its pupil fully and permanently dilated.

"I think you're a dirty old man."

"You're not real. You're in my head, just a memory."

"And _that_ makes it better?" she asked with a smile. She was missing four lower teeth, and her bottom lip flapped black and swollen, torn where Marv's bullet had exited. The streetlights' rhythmic pulse flashbulbed in that terrible little mouth, backlit by the adjacent hole in her head. "Why isn't it Jim, or Marty, or anyone else going for these drives with you."

Jesse disregarded her, concentrating on the road instead. A Greyhound bus kicked a tidal wave of mist. The Marauder ploughed though it with a flick of the wipers and a pink streak of taillights.

"You can ignore me as much as you want. I've got all night."

Eyes closed "You're not real."

"Whatever you say, Big Bro. You might want to watch out for that cop, though."

Eyes open. His radar-detector screamed a useless warning. A white shape materialised from the murk. His headlights picked out the star on the cruiser's door and the emergency lights on the roof. Jesse saw the trooper's grey-green eyes squinted down the radar gun, frantic motion to throw the car into gear. He saw the twitching blue and red lights on the rainwashed highway. They blent into electric purple.

Jesse sucked a painful breath and adjusted the rearview. The trooper was already a half-mile behind and fading. And so Jesse grinned like a stupid teenager and put the coals to the Marauder. The supercharger spooled and shrilled. Saint Christopher stood at a forty-five toward the backrests.

A quick peek behind. The trooper was still back there: a throbbing purple nuisance. Eyes back to forward, the Snoqualmie Parkway on-ramp reared through the mist a mile up.

One mile to decide.

Jesse weighed the options. Superficially his Marauder and the trooper's Crown Vic were twins: both spawned from Dearborn's Panther chassis. However the Marauder —race-ready, from the forged crankshaft to the four-ten Positrack— put nearly seven-hundred horsepower at the rear tires, while the Crown Vic had a stock four-point-six and topped out at one-hundred.

Of course, the trooper had a helicopter to call in. He could get the Ellensburg Detachment to set up a spike belt. He could radio King County Sherriff for backup. "Can't outrun the Motorola" Jesse's buds at the RPD always said.

The bleary turnpike arched enormous, like some rotten keel fetched from the bottom of the sea. A reflective street-sign, SR 18 South Exit 219 1/4mi, streaked past.

"Just pull over, Jesse."

He scowled, but quickly tightened it into a smirk and flicked a hidden toggle switch. A relay clicked, and the radar detector's LEDs went dead, as did his tail-lights. Quick work with the brakes had the Marauder doing a nose-stand and dropping to seventy. His shoulder screamed as he held it straight. Twenty yards to the ramp and he was on the throttle again, the steering wheel spinning, back tires screaming. Saint Christopher strained sideways on his chain. Jesse's heart thumped self-destructive exhilaration against his damaged ribcage.

But the trooper must have seen it coming, because emergency lights cut the darkness in Jesse's rearview a moment later. The wily bastard loved the chase as much as he did. Jesse had seen it in those squinted swampwater eyes.

"Nice one." Through gritted teeth.

"You should pull over."

"Uh uh." He was already up to one thirty-eight. His headlights cut the gloom. Patched blacktop gleamed under artificial moonlight.

"He's going to catch you."

Like Hell he would. Headlights off, nothing but starlight to guide him. There was a faint impression of an intersection ahead, no more than a silver-grey interruption of the black treescape. But he took the gamble, tromped the brakes, swung the wheel hard, and drifted at a right angle down a narrow two-lane. Stacey smacked against the passenger's window. Saint Christopher did a barrel roll and tangled around the mirror.

Back on the gas, and the engine screamed to redline. The addictive perfume of hot rubber filled the car.

Still blind and reckless beyond belief, the Marauder barrelled through a pair of sharp s-curves, planted solid on the centerline. Jim's empty Budweiser bottles clinked under the front seat. Another quick check of the rearview showed nothing but black.

Sorry, Smokey, nice try, play again.

"Well your clutch is burning, your tires are hot. You don't know what my A-bone's got!" Jesse drummed his hands on the dash and wheezed a poor approximation of the Thrashmen's iconic laughter.

He flicked his headlights on, just in time to catch a bent and sandblasted road sign in the beam.

**Rattlesnake RD SE.**

Headed southeast, back to Raccoon City.

"With a bang-shift hydro and a big Shillelagh. " Jesse whistled another thin laugh.

"Are you done your fun yet?"Stacey was glaring at him, much in the same way Susan would.

"Go away." He crushed the pedal into the floorboards. The car shimmied and leapt forward with a gassy belch. He matched her glare, much in the same way he would Susan's. "Shit, you're not even real_._..just some fucked-up-"

"If you want me to go away, just make me."

Jesse frowned, gave the steering a few tentative jerks: sloppy and dangerous, fun.

She swatted his arm."Go on, Jesse. Make me disappear."

He clenched his teeth, paid Rattlesnake Road Southeast his full attention.

"After all, I'm only in that scrambled-up noggin of yours. All you need to do is close your eyes and say 'you're not real, Stacey'…just like Doc Bachman tells you to. And I should disappear, right?"

His inhaler rattled against the cup holder. It was an ugly sound, like an engine with a bad lifter. He tossed it to the back seat.

"Right?"

He sighed.

"You _know_ why I'm still here."

Silence.

"Don't you."

After a moment."Yeah, I know why."

"And_ why _is that?"

"Fuck, Stacey. I've told you before so leave me alone!"

She batted Saint Christopher. His tarnished lookalike hung in the wattled dampness between her breasts."But I like hearing it."

He swung the car around a hairpin. A Pacificorp substation sprawled out of the darkness like a sickly island of yellow light. Stacey, silhouetted by high-tension spiderwebs and floodlit gravel, slid next to him. Her musty reek swamped his nostrils. Her lips were a half-inch from his ear.

"C'mon, Big Brother. Make a girl happy." She stroked his arm, teased the hair below his ballcap. "You sure can't do it for Susan anymore."

The car jerked toward the shoulder. Jesse turned; ready to shout, ready to banish her to his nocturnal mind's memory-banks. But his words were killed by the unremitting honesty those mismatched eyes, so instead he sunk his chin to his lapels. The engine dropped its tempo and backfired.

"Go on."She gave him a little shove."Why, am I still here? Why do you like me so much?"

He sighed, and barely audible over his ropey-sounding 302, added, "I feel guilty."

"_Guilty?"_ Asked with the Kelso smile: a punchline smile.

"Yeah."

Her smile warped into a sneer. Arc-sodium yellow flashed behind her teeth."You're a selfish son of a bitch."

He shook his head.

She grabbed his shoulder. Those familiar fingernails dug through his jacket. "Look at me!"

He offered her a sideways glance, dubious.

She reached a hand behind her head, plunged two fingers into the bullet's entry-wound. Her good eye flashed anger; the other rolled to his sagging headliner. She pulled the fingers out with a liquid _'cth-huck'_ and waved them in front of his face.

"Who shot me?"

Jesse grimaced away from the dripping fingertips. The car yawned into the opposite lane. "Good God, Stacey."

"Come on, Jesse. Who shot me?"

Stacey's grisly exhibit was kept in his peripheral vision. The driver's door handle dug into his ribcage.

The fingers were back in his face. "_WHO SHOT ME?" _

"Shit, _alright_!" He pushed Stacey's hand to her lap. "Marv shot you. You happy?"

"Good, now who infected me?"

"Pat Davies."

"That's right. Did you kill me?"

"No." Hesitant.

"You tried to protect me?"

He swallowed. "I tried, but-"

"I'll tell you what your problem is." She wiped the blackened remnants of her brain stem on his jacket. "You feel ripped off."

"Wh-"

"That's right. You almost had the life you wanted. A brother… a sister…. real parents: all that stuff you grew up without, but it was taken from you, and you're bitter. You want your body back. You want Susie to act like a teenager again. We're all dead, and you can't even enjoy your life for us.

He shook his head. "That's not true, it's-"

"Oh, quit the bullshit. You can lie to Bachman. You can hide yourself from Susie, but you can't fool me. You're stuck with me because you're still angry about what you lost."

Jesse felt his anger smoulder. The real anger, the stuff that made him see white and say things he'd always regret, and so he reacted in the default Jesse Franks manner. He shut up and pressed the gas.

"Got nothing to say suddenly? Bit too close home, Huh? The reason _I'm_ here is because you need someone to drive with. Susie'll barely get in a car with you now you scare her so bad. She's thinking about leaving you. You kn-"

"You _shut up_!" He pinned the throttle. The old car canted right as it dug into another turn. The guardrail flashed liquid metal in the rising sun. _"Just go away."_

She rolled her eye. "We already went over this, Big Bro. If you wanted me gone, I'd be gone. Some sick part of you enjoys this, enjoys trying to kill yourself on these roads. You never grew up. And that's why you like _me_, because I'm never gonna grow up either. Marv made sure of that. Susie lost her wild side. She had kids, got fat, but me…" She ran both hands down her sides, cocked her hip and made a grotesque attempt at a runway model's pout. "I'm always going to be like this."She snuggled close and gave him a teasing peck on the cheek"I get to be your girl forever."

"Get away from me!" Jesse shoved her to the passenger seat. He needed to shut her up, get her out of the car somehow. She wasn't his conscience. She wasn't some representation of his guilt. She was his Tormentor: a malevolent little ghost parked inside him. He couldn't cut her out. He couldn't shout her out, or argue her out.

Jesse eyed the window controls. The daybreak winds gusted from the Pacific and down the valley.

But at least sometimes he could drown her out.

All four windows creaked into the doors, and the car's interior became a cyclone of trash, cigarette ashes and bottle labels.

Stacey leaned forward, torn lip in a half-snarl. "Oh yeah, real clever, Jesse." The throughdraft twisted her hair into a hag's birdsnest. "You think you can just plug your ears and I'll be gone?"

"I can sure try" Jesse flipped the sun-visor, caught the pack of Marlboros and shook one into his mouth. Just like Steve McQueen, just like old times. Pedal still pinned, the accelerator needle in a slow metronome between one-twenty and one-twenty-five. Youthful blood pumped from his ballcap to his steel-toes.

Her voice was half buried by Jesse's artificial tornado. "It won't work. It never does. I'll still be here, no matter what."

He pressed the electric lighter. The morning sun hung an inch above Rattlesnake Road Southeast.

And he was in a hurry to meet it.

"You can't escape what you already know is the truth."

The lighter popped. His Marlboro was in a healthy smoulder moments later. Jesse grinned and hugged the outside edge of another suicide bend, less than a foot away from a fiery wreck at the bottom of the mountain.

"You're a sad fuck, Jesse. You deserve me."

Knuckles tight on the old wheel. Satan's smile on his lips. "I'm not sad."

And Stacey laughed: A high-pitched shrill over the engine and the wind.

The car bulled around another turn. Jesse was still smiling. The roof's torn vinyl caught the slipstream and slapped a hectic cadence above his head.

The smell of cigarettes, antifreeze, and hot oil. The sound of wind and engine and a laughing girl. The road, the mountains and faded green paint. It was possible that he never escaped Raccoon City. He might have bled to death in the RPD's break-room, or drowned in the Arklay River, or been killed by a nineteen year-old Oregon National Guardsman. Because if this wasn't Heaven, he didn't know what was.

He turned to Susan and grinned his Steve McQueen grin. She laughed and said something that he couldn't make out. Her hair was flying every which way, and she gave him that intoxicating little squeal as he barrelled the car into the opposite lane.

It was always the same.

* * *

><p>Then the dream ends when the phone rings.<p>

You're doing alright.

He said "It's out there most days and nights, but only a fool would complain."

Anyway, Susan, if you like.

Our conversation is the faintest sound in my memory.

As those fingernails, scratching on the hull.

* * *

><p><strong>So, although I titled this fic after an old 80s summer jam by The Kings, I kept listening to The Hell Song while I wrote. So I substituted one lame-ass Canadian band for another, lol.<strong>

**Thanks for reading. You can expect something TOTALLY different from me next.**

**-C**


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